This early, somewhat monochromatic painting depicts two separate subjects that served as illustrations for a book titled Studies in Western Life, which appeared in 1890. The illustrations were accompanied by a text authored by Montana pioneer Granville Stuart. On the upper portion of the painting, Russell shows a “stand,” or “still hunt,” a brutally effective method of killing large numbers of buffalo that was widely employed in the slaughter of the herds in Montana during the 1870s and 1880s. The hunter concealed himself in a place where the animals could not detect him with their keen sense of smell. He then chose an animal near the edge of the herd and shot it with his large-caliber buffalo rifle. When the animal fell to the ground, the rest of the herd would not flee, but instead mill around the dying animal. Because of this, a hunter could kill a large number of the animals in quick succession from a single position. It is written that the official record for a single hunter utilizing this method was approximately 120 buffalo within forty-five minutes. The scene on the lower part of Russell’s painting shows the Montana buffalo herds in happier days, when their numbers were large and they roamed more freely on the plains. By the time Russell first arrived in the Montana Territory in 1881, the buffalo herds were already greatly reduced and on their way to near-extinction in the wild.